The state of the news media 2004 and its implications for public relations

Journalism.org has published its annual report on American journalism. They identify eight overarching trends that shape news media in 2004 and I added a comment on the implications for public relations.

1. A growing number of news outlets are chasing relatively static or even shrinking audiences for news. One result of this is that most sectors of the news media are losing audience. The only sectors seeing general audience growth today are online, ethnic and alternative media.

PR activities should focus more on online and alternative media.

2. Much of the new investment in journalism today – much of the information revolution generally – is in disseminating the news, not in collecting it. Most sectors of the media are cutting back in the newsroom, both in terms of staff and in the time they have to gather and report the news.

Increasing opportunities for PR practitioners who position themselves as resources for journalists. Help them do their job and you will be rewarded.

3. In many parts of the news media, we are increasingly getting the raw elements of news as the end product. This is particularly true in the newer, 24-hour media. In cable and online, there is a tendency toward a jumbled, chaotic, partial quality in some reports, without much synthesis or even the ordering of the information. There is also a great deal of effort, particularly on cable news, that is put into delivering essentially the same news repetitively without any meaningful updating.

PR need to pay increasing attention on crisis management. With less time to quality check, faster speed and more media running after the same ball, risks increase and their effect increases too.

4. Journalistic standards now vary even inside a single news organization. Companies are trying to reassemble and deliver to advertisers a mass audience for news not in one place, but across different programs, products and platforms. To do so, some are varying their news agenda, their rules on separating advertising from news and even their ethical standards. What will air on an MSNBC talk show on cable might not meet the standards of NBC News on broadcast, and the way that advertising intermingles with news stories on many newspaper Web sites would never be allowed in print. Even the way a television network treats news on a prime time magazine versus a morning show or evening newscast can vary widely.

PR practitioners need to be updated on what news and pitches are welcome in what media, and when it is inappropriate.

5. Without investing in building new audiences, the long-term outlook for many traditional news outlets seems problematic. Many traditional media are maintaining their profitability by focusing on costs, including cutting back in their newsrooms. Our study shows general increases in journalist workload, declines in numbers of reporters, shrinking space in newscasts to make more room for ads and promotions, and in various ways that are measurable, thinning the product.

With less space for news, less pitches will be successful. And with a decreasing audience for mainstream media, PR practitioners need to look to alternative media with pitches, or to bypass media altogether via for example corporate blogs. On the other hand, the increasing advertising clutter, serves as an argument for shifting ad dollars to PR dollars as advertising effectiveness decreases.

6. Convergence seems more inevitable and potentially less threatening to journalists than it may have seemed a few years ago. At least for now, online journalism appears to be leading more to convergence with older media rather than replacement of it. When audience trends are examined closely, one cannot escape the sense that the nation is heading toward a situation, especially at the national level, in which institutions that were once in different media, such as CBS and The Washington Post, will be direct competitors on a single primary field of battle – online. The idea that the medium is the message increasingly will be passé. This is an exciting possibility that offers the potential of new audiences, new ways of storytelling, more immediacy and more citizen involvement.

News outlets will find new ways of distributing content, many of them online. PR practitioners must follow this development and take note on who issuccessfull in establishing an audience. Perhaps also with the rise of journalist blogs, star journalists increasingly will become their own media and less dependent on their employer.

7. The biggest question may not be technological but economic. While journalistically online appears to represent opportunity for old media rather than simply cannibalization, the bigger issue may be financial. If online proves to be a less useful medium for subscription fees or advertising, will it provide as strong an economic foundation for newsgathering as television and newspapers have? If not, the move to the Web may lead to a general decline in the scope and quality of American journalism, not because the medium isn’t suited for news, but because it isn’t suited to the kind of profits that underwrite newsgathering.

If online media have trouble with financing, they need to develop new ways of gathering news information that are not as costly and PR practitioners need to pay attention to how news stories reaches online media and if they can participate in the making of news.

8. Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them. Several factors point in this direction. One is simple supply and demand. As more outlets compete for their information, it becomes a seller’s market for information. Another is workload. The content analysis of the 24-hour-news outlets suggests that their stories contain fewer sources. The increased leverage enjoyed by news sources has already encouraged a new kind of checkbook journalism, as seen in the television networks efforts to try to get interviews with Michael Jackson and Jessica Lynch, the soldier whose treatment while in captivity in Iraq was exaggerated in many accounts.

Combine seller’s market for information with less and less space for news. The result for PR pros? Either you’re in, or you’re out. If you are not an expert or a market leader you will find it harder to get publicity in mainstream media. Can we imagine more focus on thought leadership, personal branding and third party endorsements from the PR industry?